+- tyFlow Forum (https://forum.tyflow.com)
+-- Forum: tyFlow Discussion (https://forum.tyflow.com/forum-1.html)
+--- Forum: General Discussion (https://forum.tyflow.com/forum-2.html)
+--- Thread: Smooth Operator (/thread-2797.html)
Smooth Operator - Syu_z - 12-09-2021
Hello, I am back with another question.
I need to cache a crowd scene. The crowd is in point cache mode per human mesh with animation. I use tyflow to scatter them, so far so good. I managed to export 1.4k frames at this stage.
The mesh as it appears in tyflow is behaving as if there's no smoothing group. So ok, I applied smooth operator and thought it will export just as easily. I was wrong. It keeps crashing.
On further inspection, it seems that during the export particles process to tycache, the RAM keeps climbing even though I turned off Enable Caching in the tyflow option. I am a little bit confused why that is the case. Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but I thought if this is turned off, there will be no frames kept in RAM and therefore the RAM shouldn't climb higher.
Can anyone suggest a solution?
Edit: Actually, I tried with much smaller scene, and while it can be exported, the smooth operator is continuously applying auto-smooth. It creates some popping motion on the mesh. I am curious, what's the workflow of exporting characters/crowds without stumbling on this issue? I imagine a non-smoothed character is not ideal, but auto-smooth is also creating new issue. I was thinking maybe some 'inherit smoothing groups' would be available in Shape operator, but I didn't see it.
RE: Smooth Operator - Syu_z - 12-09-2021
Upon further inspection, the mesh that's used inside shape operator has no smoothing group, even though it looks smooth in viewport. Once I apply auto-smoothing on editable poly level, the mesh produced by tyflow is smooth as well. I think that fixes it.
RE: Smooth Operator - tyFlow - 12-09-2021
Sounds like the mesh had no smoothing groups, but has explicit normals defined. That will give it a smooth look in the view as a raw mesh, but because tyFlow doesn't support explicit normals currently, it'll look faceted once imported.
RE: Smooth Operator - Syu_z - 12-09-2021
I see. Thanks for the insight! I totally forgot about normals.